I'am very overweight in S'pore simply because I believe in home advantage when investing. In fact, I hold only SGX-listed stocks currently.

Investing overseas is not very tax friendly at all. Dividends from my SGX-listed stocks have some tax credits and I can use them to offset my income tax every year. The reason why I haven't contributed to SRS to date is simply because of my section 44 tax credits from those S'pore sourced dividends.

After deducting my tax credits, IRAS will have to refund me every year. Therefore, this is a great advantage which investing overseas do not have.

Hi Aragorn,

I do hold Sincere Watch and in fact I had been a shareholder of this company for quite sometime. It is currently very close to my top 30 holdings on my last check and I do like this stock very much.

It is a slow and steady stock. Not your typical China stocks which can give you great gains in a short span of time, but a good stock to hold in the long term.

The company had managed to deliver so far, and their overseas expansion strategy is doing well. Dividend yield is quite decent also.

Undervalued stocks? Well, they always pop up now and then. In fact, I had recommended forumers at sgfunds.com to look at Superbowl and Hiap Moh, which in my view offers great value to current price.

I do hold Hour Glass and it is one of my minor holdings. Yes, it is trading below NTA and they gave a good dividend last year.

But they do have a lot of stocks in their balance sheet. I suspect those are inventories that they kept and might not be able to fetch the NTA value if they sold everything off and liquidate their business.

That might explain the reason why it had been trading at a discount to NTA for such a long time.

When you invest in S'pore-listed companies, you are not investing in S'pore only. With globalisation, many S'pore companies derived their profits from overseas and one can't say that the risk when investing in S'pore is country specific risk. It is not.

Even after 2007, without the tax credit, S'pore's corporate tax rate is still one of the most competitive in the world. Therefore, from the taxation point of view, investing in the local market is still valid.

Of course, the other factors like familarity with the companies and being able to physcially attend the AGMs to know more about the companies are some of rhe advantage of investing locally. You can't have these advantage when you invest in other markets.

About Me

A self-directed investor, looking to invest for retirement needs and bypass all those expensive financial planners/insurance agents. Investing is fun, profitable or most important of all, knowledge gained is useful for the rest of your life!